CDC weighs new opioid prescribing guidelines amid controversy over old ones

Doctors will soon have new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how and when to prescribe opioids for pain.

Those guidelines – currently under review as a draft – will serve as an update to the agency's previous advice on opioids, issued in 2016. That advice is widely blamed for leading to harmful consequences for patients with chronic pain.

Federal officials have acknowledged their original guidance was often misapplied; it was supposed to serve as a roadmap for clinicians navigating tricky decisions around opioids and pain — not as a rigid set of rules.

But the 2016 version was used as the basis for sweeping policy decisions, as lawmakers and health leaders struggled to contain the nation's overdose crisis. Many states adopted laws and regulations that set limits on prescribing, and health insurers also crafted policies to that effect.

And doctors grew wary of giving opioids at all, which often led to sudden disruptions of treatment, resulting in physical and mental agony, and even a heightened risk of suicide.

The restrictive climate around, director of national policy and advocacy for the U.S. Pain Foundation